Olympus’ Troubles Echo Peter Drucker’s Management Concerns
08 December 2011
Former Olympus Chief Executive Michael Woodford arrives at a news conference in Tokyo Friday, November 25, 2011
This is the VOA Special English Economics Report.
In business, leadership is never yesterday’s issue. This week, the Japanese electronics company Olympus made a public apology. It said company officials hid over one billion dollars in losses going back to the nineteen nineties. The company’s stock has lost half its value since October. Olympus says it is investigating and considering legal action against some of its current and former officials.
Reports say the problems at Olympus seem to come from thinking more about declaring profits in the short-term instead of building real value.
This was one of the issues considered by management expert Peter Drucker over his long career. Peter Drucker died in two thousand five. But many of his ideas remain very meaningful today.
Drucker liked to share his knowledge not by answering questions but by asking them. He once said business people must not ask "what do we want to sell?" but "what do people want to buy?"
He taught at the Claremont Graduate School of Management in California for over thirty years. He advised companies on business methods. And he wrote thirty-nine books on business and economic ideas.
Peter Drucker was born in Austria in nineteen-oh-nine. In the late nineteen twenties, he worked as a reporter in Frankfurt, Germany. He also studied international law.
最新
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25